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 Jan 2015 courtney
Marium Iqbal
Being drunk doesn't excuse it.  
"You didn't know what you were doing."
"I love him, he's my son."  
You don't remember what you did.
Do you know he still does?

The purple in his cheeks.
Lips split.
Eyes scared.

Look at what you have done.
Harmed your own son.  

It hurts when he laughs.
His cheeks sting as he cries.
Back jolts up as it touches the back of his chair.

Is it fair?
The boy scared of wearing a belt.

It reminds him of his father.
The way he cornered him, till he was a pleading and crying mess.  

The smell of alcohol lingering in the air.
It makes him sick.
He remembers.

He runs his hands up his left arm.
Cigarette burned holes scattered.

He couldn't take one more beating.
He didn't know how.

He tried his hardest.
As he closed his eyes.

He tried suicide.
He tried it all, the pills, the windows.

He couldn't do it.
Leave his mother and brothers behind.
Just because you were drunk, and can't remember. Doesn't mean they don't. They remember the betrayal. The broken trust. How does a parent do that to their child
When you look at yourself,
Your psychedelic bruises,
Your prosperous veins,
Your ever-increasing freckles,
The stretch marks on your hips,
Your ever-so-slight collarbones,
Your deep blue eyes,
And you say
"Why can't I be lovely?"

Understand that when I look at you,
I see the endless galaxies,
The roads yet to be travelled,
The marvellous constellations,
I see the lines of Jupiter,
The glorious mountains,
I see the wondrous ocean.
So when I say
"Darling you already are"
Know that when I look at you,
I see my world.
Houses sitting condemned, taking up the view
while the old guys sit sipping forties in forty degree
temperatures facing the wall so the wind doesn't burn
their faces too much in what could be called a modest December.

They turn their back to the guy hiding bags of rock
in his lips to avoid detection from the cameras posted
on both street corners. This place is set to a constant sneaking
violin pluck. We are all capers in a burgle commune.

I hung up a tarp today so the stray cats can hide from the wind.
In one stanza, January has set in and it is bitter to the bone.
We summoned the name of old man winter from repetition and
no one man may hold that burden. The ***** only warms their blood.
 Jan 2015 courtney
DC raw love
Young man, its time to wake up.
Your love affair with death has got to go.

From many long years, you have to rake up.
The Leaves from the past.

Slow suicide is no way to go.

Blue, colored gray days
Dizzy weakend by the haze
Infection is not a phase

The cracks and lines from where you failed.
They make an easy man to read.

For all those times you bleed.
For a little peace from God you plea and beg

Your not a fake now, so wake up.
Now is your time not to go.
 Jan 2015 courtney
Ari
The scene replays slowly
Second by second,
I can imagine your struggle
Confusion, anger, hurt

Why me? Why now?
You wonder of your worthlessness
Why every single person
leaves

You never understood your
importance
Never taking love
With an open hand

The burden always lay
In my mind
Call me an idiot, over caring human
I still wanted to be there for you

•••

I know someone's given you
The support, the love you've always needed
That was the final key to my puzzle,
Why I could never get over the fact that
I could never again be your *someone
 Jan 2015 courtney
martin challis
Suitably respectful, and
never asking for trouble
or the time of day
I wait at home-station
like a cattle dog
My master, absent in the midst of a promise

My bones wait for flesh
My theatre
for Godot

As factories burn
As droughts become floods
As Apollo is a god sending chariots to the moon

I’m ten years beyond birth already counting ways
to escape the infirmary

The hallway mirror
holds an apparition of silence
And over my shoulder
Is reflected a leafless tree
of seeming indifference

There may be leaves one day
but who can say

I wait
like Didi
for what I mean
This emptiness inside me...

How it seems to grow
From a whisper to a scream…

From a shadow to a night unending…

Crying out for change
For something temporary
To fill the void between now and forever
Even though I know…

Temporary will only feed the emptiness
And merely pacify the pain of loneliness…

Not only for me...

But for another

Is it wrong to want someone to hold
To want someone to hold me
To chase away each other’s darkness
In companionship and calm
In passion and compassion
In mutual understanding and desire
Knowing it will only be temporary
Until we each find our forever?

Maybe…

Maybe not…

All I know is this:

Every time what seemed to be my forever
Turned out to be only temporary...

The emptiness grew more fiercely...

Instantaneously...

And the nights grew longer…

Loneliness became more lonely…

My heart more broken

And if I can curse the sky…

Curse my name…

Knowing how much harder it will be…

How can I condone…

How can I expect…

How can I allow…

How can I ask anyone for temporary
No matter how much it may appeal to either of us...

Temporarily?

If I know it would do more to destroy love
Than to create love…

Why does temporary even appeal to me at all at times?

Because…

Sometimes…

Temporary feels like forever

But…

Temporary always ends

No matter how long it takes…

Temporary always ends

So…

No matter how long the nights…

No matter how long the wait…

No matter how lonely loneliness may seem…

I wait...

Though the emptiness inside me grows...

No matter how loud the whisper...

No matter how silent the scream…

I will wait for my forever
Because this pain is only temporary
And temporary always ends…

Even when it feels like forever
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